


Something Blue

by kmo



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pretending To Be Married, au of antipasto, bedannibal in paris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4031455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmo/pseuds/kmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Were this marriage legal, you would be a countess.” Hannibal says, rising. “Bedelia Du Maurier, eighth Countess Lecter.” </p><p>“I never wanted to be a countess. I only ever wanted to be a doctor,” she tells him and he licks his lips, tasting her pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Blue

Hannibal stands before her clad from head to toe in sleek black leather, looking like a cross between some dungeon fantasy and a mid-life crisis. She’d be tempted to tease him about it were the look in his eyes, the irises ringed with maroon, not so fearsome. He is a hawk on the wing, a puma lurking in the grass and poised to pounce. His prey has been sighted and tonight it is fortunately someone other than herself—an Oxbridge scholar named Roman Fell.

He gives her precise instructions about the next leg of their travels, handing over false documents he had already drawn up in anticipation of his success. “Alitalia flight 607 leaving at 8:55PM from Charles de Gaulle. When you arrive in Rome, take a room at this  _pensione_  near the Termini and wait for me—the innkeeper knows to expect you. I will join you there and we will take the train to Florence together. If I am not there in three days time, I will not be coming, and you may assume me captured or dead.”

Bedelia flips through the leather travel wallet he has given her. An EU passport, airline and train tickets, and 500 euro cash. She could run with this, but not very far. “Are you expecting trouble this evening?”

Hannibal’s hand hovers near his thigh where a knife resides in a leather holster. “Dr. Fell should not present much difficulty. But one never knows.” He moves toward her and takes her hands in his, sharp eyes searching her face. “Though I should tell you, Bedelia, if you wished to resign your position as my companion, now would be the opportune moment.”

“Would you honestly let me go?”

“You would be free of me—one way or another,” he says, sibilant and dangerous.

Bedelia knows he says such things to test her, to needle and torture her, and though her pulse quickens ( _fight or flight_ ), she knows he is not serious. At least not tonight. “If I had wanted to be free of you, I would never have insisted on coming along in the first place, Hannibal.”

His dark eyes lighten, little highlights of cherry red blossom in their depths, a look she has come to associate with amusement. “Very well,” he says turning to retrieve a small trove of boxes from the dresser. They are square, rectangular, and octagonal, in shades from robin’s egg blue to faded vermillion and sun-bleached chartreuse, adorned with colorful tassels and tarnished clasps. They smell of lost luxury, of decadence and dust.

“I made one other stop today besides the document forger’s—the bank. There were a few things I wished to retrieve from my family’s vault before the FBI got wind of them.” He flicks open the clasp of one flat box with his nail, revealing a long strand of black pearls. “Jewels that belonged to my late Aunt Murasaki. They are for you.”

Bedelia opens the boxes one by one, revealing the remaining treasures of House Lecter. A cloisonné broach in the shape of a dragonfly and a dangling gold and diamond lavalier necklace. Teardrop-shaped gold hoops that would not have been out of place adorning a star of the silver screen. A filigreed atomizer half-full of cognac-colored perfume. Silver haircombs and a matching brush embossed with the family crest. A ring with a diamond the size of a hailstone in a worn sapphire velvet box at the last.

She knows the meaning of such a gift. For the first time the implications of what she has agreed to wash over her, leaving her lightheaded and dizzy.

“Some of the finer pieces were lost in the two world wars, the rest to the Communists. Long before my time,” Hannibal says wistfully, lifting the strand of black pearls and running it through his fingers like a lock of dark hair, Murasaki’s hair, she thinks. His eyes dim, suddenly saddened, as he says, “You are the closest thing I will ever have to a wife. She would have wanted you to have them.”

She lays a hand across his cautiously. She wonders—because it is her nature to wonder, as much it is Hannibal’s to devour—what family heirlooms Hannibal might have gifted Will Graham with were he here in her place as was originally intended. “They are very beautiful, Hannibal. I will treasure them.”

“Actually, I don’t know what she would have wanted,” Hannibal says, more morose than ever, rejection and hurt bubbling up like magma beneath the surface of his broken person-suit. “I don’t think she ever expected me to find a partner to share my life. Or, perhaps she thought it best I didn’t. Murasaki knew me for what I was.”

 _Monster_  is the unspoken word that hangs in the air. Bedelia does not think Hannibal regrets being a monster, only that the world he so loves holds no place for him as one.

 _I let him know me, see me_ , Hannibal had said on the night they left Baltimore. He presented her with his heart, cut open and bleeding, the most honesty he had ever shown her in all the years she had known him. “I see you, Hannibal. I know you. Not as well as others, but I am doing my best.” Bedelia reaches out tentatively to touch his elbow, trying to draw him back from the abyss. “And I’m still here,” she adds.

He turns his face from her, but not before she can glimpse his eyes watery with tears. “ _What is there in you to love,_ ” he spits, voice raw with a venom that is not his, but Murasaki’s. “The last words she ever said to me.”

Bedelia feels a chill run down her spine like an electric current. Hannibal had told her in one of their sessions that his aunt had died of ovarian cancer— _swift but fatal_ ,  _before her time_. Swift and fatal seemed certain; she is no longer sure about the cancer.

He turns back to her and asks in a small voice, “Do you agree with her?”

Bedelia inhales, feels her mind navigating the mental high wire laid out before her. “You love, Hannibal. Very powerfully, very deeply.” His eyes brighten a bit, but his jaw is set in firm suspicion. “But love is not enough to check your wrath.”

Hannibal nods, appreciative, as if she has offered him a particularly tasty hors d’oeuvre. He takes the ring from its box and holds it between thumb and forefinger, a dangerous proposition, before dropping to his knees in front of her. Never breaking eye contact, he slips it on her finger. He does not ask her for her hand in marriage and she does not give it to him. “Were this marriage legal, you would be a countess.” he says, rising. “Bedelia Du Maurier, eighth Countess Lecter.”

“I never wanted to be a countess. I only ever wanted to be a doctor,” she tells him and he licks his lips, tasting her her pain. She lost the privilege of being the latter the day she killed a patient; the former, she supposes, will have to do.

Hannibal takes her ringed hand in his, lets his forefinger trace tantalizing circles over the inside of her wrist. “Something borrowed,” he muses, thumb caressing her wedding ring, her heart trembling unexpectedly. “Something blue,” he says, gazing into her eyes, pulling her close to place a tender kiss on the outside of her temple.

Bedelia extends her left hand, diamond catching the light and nearly blinding her with its brilliance. She does not know which is more borrowed: Murasaki’s heirloom ring, or Hannibal’s careworn, tattered love for her.

**Author's Note:**

> I realize this will probably all be AU in a few days, but I couldn't resist the idea of Hannibal giving Bedelia Murasaki's ring. And unless it is stated in canon otherwise, I am going to believe it.
> 
> For those who haven seen or read _Hannibal Rising_ , Murasaki's rejection wounds Hannibal deeply, causing him to enter what he calls "his heart's long winter," which did not melt until he met Will Graham 20 some years later. I'd like to think the thaw began a bit with his therapy with Bedelia--she sees some of him and she likes him, which sets him up to form a genuine friendship with Will. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as bedannibal-lectaurier. Come watch me lose my shit over s3.


End file.
